"ALL strategy games have a mechanism to regulate game pace. [...]Chess, Magic the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh for example"
The tournament timers for these games make them faster by limiting the time for each player. Chess even has some "fast chess" variants: rapid chess, blitz chess, bullet chess.
You did not make any viable ones, you made ones based on your opinion, ignoring all the benefits from the timer being left at 90 seconds.
Also, yugioh has a time limit to make the game faster, not slower. Most competitive yugioh games are finished in the first 3 to 4 turns, does that sound like artificially dragged out time?
So your argument is 'because other strategie games have mechanics to manage pace'.
Listen, I don't get more gear because of the cooldown because I play alone, there is nobody left to play with. My portals are level 5, and I throw away most if not everything but mods and keys.
They did not analyze anything, they cant even monitor their own game performance and issues and rely on their players to tell them when the game isn't working. Puh-lease.
The fact that the cooldown timer isn't going back to 5 minutes already proves that is was nonsense to begin with, and the 90 seconds was fine; there have literally been no negative side effects for 2 years. And no, it's not what is making the game 'too easy', that is because we can now link under fields, have an ever growing amount of portals (in big cities it's crazy, rural players are left with mediocre game boards) apex, and other boosts constantly with FOMO events.
Like the others pointed out, you didn't make any real arguments as to why 90 seconds was bad, or why 180 or even 360 seconds is better. The game and the players evolve, so changes are required. Even starcraft 2 changed the start so it would get to the 'early game' faster, by adding more workers at the start.
I would be more inclined to be 'pro +90 seconds' if there would be one shred of data/evidence that shows it would be beneficial to the game. But like I said, nobody can produce that, not even niantic. The only thing I can think of is to reduce load (like disabling QC's) and that would be even more stupid, they should focus on fixing things, not implementing workarounds.
This is such a well thought out post. You brought up some great points about how waiting periods are crucial to strategy games. It makes me wonder how many of the people complaining do much more beyond just **** AP or MU daily, do they even make any other positive contribution to the game?
Every time Ingress has died a little, ie lost more players than joined and sticked around.
It’s extremely noticeable over the last 18 months, although the year before that was rough as well. They have to see this in what little monitoring they have, and they don’t seem to care one bit.
At this rate, there won’t be any players left to finally enjoy irl FS and anomalies.
He has not made any good point, he makes an argument but then uses, as evidence, games that introduces time limits to make games FASTER, not artificially dragged out to the detriment of enjoyment
Between the cooldown going up and CORE losing APEX, I've decided to cancel my CORE subscription. Looking forward to picking it up in the future, but for now these changes suggest Ingress is going in another direction than the one I enjoy. Time to free up 500 inventory space :/
If you need more than 2-3 keys for a portal, then you're choosing a playstyle that forces you to sit around and wait. The Niantic team is clearly trying to discourage this constant layering and get people to move more, given the different changes and new features. Their game has it's goals, and this is part of their change to make it.
Another thing Niantic could do is adjust the hack speed value of heat sinks. The VRHS currently increases hack speed by 70%. With the increase of cooldown from 90 to 180 seconds, this means I will have to wait 54 seconds between hacks with a VRHS, up from 27 seconds. While this may seem trivial, this doubling of time will add up to many minutes and hours over time.
If Niantic adjusted VRHS hack speed from 70% to 80%, that would reduce VRHS cooldown from 54 to 36 seconds. Even better, if Niantic adjusted VRHS hack speed to 85%, that would make cooldown... 27 seconds. Proportional adjustments could be made to the rare and common mod. This is what I would actually call a compromise. It would force you to use heat sinks if you want the 27 second cooldown time, but everything else would still be 3-5 minutes.
Citation on Niantic team "trying to discourage this constant layering "? I don't remember seeing this mentioned in any AMAs, roadmaps, etc.
If this is actually the case, maybe a post from Niantic explaining their reasoning would be helpful.
Fwiw, you need 2-3 keys per portal to micro field anyway. Increasing portal cool down will force active fielding agents to purchase heat sinks or waste precious time by waiting longer.
I've yet to see a realistic list of pros versus the growing list of cons this change will bring.
The current 90 second cool down is perfectly fine and should not be changed.
The Niantic team is clearly trying to discourage this constant layering and get people to move more, given the different changes and new features.
I think you give far too much credit to Niantic for deep thought about playstyle. It seems far more likely to me that they just decided it was time to unwind the change and semi-randomly picked a number.
If what you say is true then the original reduction in cooldown was designed to encourage layering, and there is no evidence for that. It was a pandemic-related change.
I mean, I get why some people don't like layering at large scale such as permafields, but what's wrong with microlayering? Why should that be discouraged? I prefer it to traditional microfielding.
@Perringaiden And thus reducing layering is also an unintended consequence. Your assertion that it is anything else seems to be nothing but your wish for it to be true.
Our group did field layering and some field art because it promoted creativity, exploration, and resourcefulness. It was made possible because of reduced CD times. We could chill and explore museums and historical sites after the fielding. Now, we don't have the time to explore new places because of this change in CD. I guess all good things must come to an end and it gives us more opportunity to look at other games made by other gaming companies. Does anyone want to play Kirby out there?
Is it? Or are they choosing to make this change to reverse the previously unintended consequence? I agree, they should answer this, but if nothing else, a reverse in the change that caused the impact is likely to reduce that very impact.
@Perringaiden I am using Logic. As far as I know, Niantic has never once said anything about layering being good or bad although they have certainly promoted lots of cases of big layered fields.
Niantic said from the beginning that the cooldown reduction was a temporary change.
I see no evidence that fields are being layered more with a shorter cooldown time, though I don't know how to get reliable data on that.
There is exactly zero evidence to support your assertion that they changed the time because they want to reduce field layering. This seems like something that you've made up because you want it to be true, despite an overwhelming lack of evidence for it. I totally grok that you want it to be true but conclusions should be based on evidence rather than wishes.
Yet again you're using the "If it's not written in black and white on a web page, it's wrong" argument. Which since Niantic doesn't make these statements, just means you can claim to win anything.
If you want to go on "Black and White", then Niantic is reversing a change they said they'd reverse when they made the change in the first place, and everyone can just stop complaining because they were warned.
You can grok "this is better" all you like, but you have no evidence to prove that a shorter cooldown is "better" either. It's just your feelings.
We have seen through the last two years, that a host of changes have increased players obsession with layering, with faster key hacking being a clear component of this, blatantly obvious to anyone who actually looks objectively at the game. I know you want someone to write it down for you, but unless you actually use your eyes and look at gameplay trends across the globe, no-one is going to do the work for you.
Logic is that a change that makes keys easier to obtain is going to result in people choosing to play in ways that maximise the benefit of easy access to keys because players in any game always find efficiency even at the cost of fun. It's human nature. Ingress is the epitome of optimizing fun out of the environment.
Regardless, Niantic has made this decision and based on their recent behavior, is going to weather the storm in the teacup it's created. People will cancel CORE, then restart it a month or two later when they miss the inventory space and have gotten used to playing with the longer cooldowns. People who are this obsessed with the game that they absolutely lose their minds when the cooldown for a friendly portal is 90 seconds longer, are not quitting any time soon...
Feelings are fine, but every post claiming this will destroy the game is passing off feelings as fact (or making absurd comparisons to climate change).
What strange problems you have. In my city, people dream just to play. Imagine that in the city where I live, it is impossible to destroy every key portal due to a super fast recharge that activates at any time of the day or night. It remains only to repaint such portals and hope that the player who installed them will miss the attack notification.
And I'm not talking about the fact that there are people who constantly have several level 7 portals at their side, in which there are a lot of resonators set by agents that no one has ever seen in real life.
I understand that it’s different for you, and for example, in England only gentlemen play ingress, and in France only noble monsieurs. But in many places the game is impossible due to the fact that cheating techniques are used to the fullest.
Comments
For me, it's not about "gear", it's about specific keys.
I use public transport a lot, and waiting 3 minutes for an extra hack may mean I miss the train and have to wait an hour for the next one.
"ALL strategy games have a mechanism to regulate game pace. [...]Chess, Magic the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh for example"
The tournament timers for these games make them faster by limiting the time for each player. Chess even has some "fast chess" variants: rapid chess, blitz chess, bullet chess.
You did not make any viable ones, you made ones based on your opinion, ignoring all the benefits from the timer being left at 90 seconds.
Also, yugioh has a time limit to make the game faster, not slower. Most competitive yugioh games are finished in the first 3 to 4 turns, does that sound like artificially dragged out time?
So your argument is 'because other strategie games have mechanics to manage pace'.
Listen, I don't get more gear because of the cooldown because I play alone, there is nobody left to play with. My portals are level 5, and I throw away most if not everything but mods and keys.
They did not analyze anything, they cant even monitor their own game performance and issues and rely on their players to tell them when the game isn't working. Puh-lease.
The fact that the cooldown timer isn't going back to 5 minutes already proves that is was nonsense to begin with, and the 90 seconds was fine; there have literally been no negative side effects for 2 years. And no, it's not what is making the game 'too easy', that is because we can now link under fields, have an ever growing amount of portals (in big cities it's crazy, rural players are left with mediocre game boards) apex, and other boosts constantly with FOMO events.
Like the others pointed out, you didn't make any real arguments as to why 90 seconds was bad, or why 180 or even 360 seconds is better. The game and the players evolve, so changes are required. Even starcraft 2 changed the start so it would get to the 'early game' faster, by adding more workers at the start.
I would be more inclined to be 'pro +90 seconds' if there would be one shred of data/evidence that shows it would be beneficial to the game. But like I said, nobody can produce that, not even niantic. The only thing I can think of is to reduce load (like disabling QC's) and that would be even more stupid, they should focus on fixing things, not implementing workarounds.
Every time there is a change that some section of the playerbase doesnt like, there is always claims this will be the end of Ingress.
Ingress is still here.
We need to think bigger than our personal gameplay.
Great agents can and will adapt to any change.
This is such a well thought out post. You brought up some great points about how waiting periods are crucial to strategy games. It makes me wonder how many of the people complaining do much more beyond just **** AP or MU daily, do they even make any other positive contribution to the game?
Every time Ingress has died a little, ie lost more players than joined and sticked around.
It’s extremely noticeable over the last 18 months, although the year before that was rough as well. They have to see this in what little monitoring they have, and they don’t seem to care one bit.
At this rate, there won’t be any players left to finally enjoy irl FS and anomalies.
He has not made any good point, he makes an argument but then uses, as evidence, games that introduces time limits to make games FASTER, not artificially dragged out to the detriment of enjoyment
not sure whats taking niantic so long to do normal FS and get people out there then sitting home, whats the hold up i dont understand really?
Between the cooldown going up and CORE losing APEX, I've decided to cancel my CORE subscription. Looking forward to picking it up in the future, but for now these changes suggest Ingress is going in another direction than the one I enjoy. Time to free up 500 inventory space :/
If you need more than 2-3 keys for a portal, then you're choosing a playstyle that forces you to sit around and wait. The Niantic team is clearly trying to discourage this constant layering and get people to move more, given the different changes and new features. Their game has it's goals, and this is part of their change to make it.
Another thing Niantic could do is adjust the hack speed value of heat sinks. The VRHS currently increases hack speed by 70%. With the increase of cooldown from 90 to 180 seconds, this means I will have to wait 54 seconds between hacks with a VRHS, up from 27 seconds. While this may seem trivial, this doubling of time will add up to many minutes and hours over time.
If Niantic adjusted VRHS hack speed from 70% to 80%, that would reduce VRHS cooldown from 54 to 36 seconds. Even better, if Niantic adjusted VRHS hack speed to 85%, that would make cooldown... 27 seconds. Proportional adjustments could be made to the rare and common mod. This is what I would actually call a compromise. It would force you to use heat sinks if you want the 27 second cooldown time, but everything else would still be 3-5 minutes.
Citation on Niantic team "trying to discourage this constant layering "? I don't remember seeing this mentioned in any AMAs, roadmaps, etc.
If this is actually the case, maybe a post from Niantic explaining their reasoning would be helpful.
Fwiw, you need 2-3 keys per portal to micro field anyway. Increasing portal cool down will force active fielding agents to purchase heat sinks or waste precious time by waiting longer.
I've yet to see a realistic list of pros versus the growing list of cons this change will bring.
The current 90 second cool down is perfectly fine and should not be changed.
@Perringaiden writes:
The Niantic team is clearly trying to discourage this constant layering and get people to move more, given the different changes and new features.
I think you give far too much credit to Niantic for deep thought about playstyle. It seems far more likely to me that they just decided it was time to unwind the change and semi-randomly picked a number.
If what you say is true then the original reduction in cooldown was designed to encourage layering, and there is no evidence for that. It was a pandemic-related change.
If what you say is true then the original reduction in cooldown was designed to encourage layering,
Law of unintended consequences. It wasn't made to encourage layering, but it was one of the primary effects.
it was not the faster cooldown that got me hooked on layering. it was my team mates and 57cell's youtube channel.
I mean, I get why some people don't like layering at large scale such as permafields, but what's wrong with microlayering? Why should that be discouraged? I prefer it to traditional microfielding.
@Perringaiden And thus reducing layering is also an unintended consequence. Your assertion that it is anything else seems to be nothing but your wish for it to be true.
Our group did field layering and some field art because it promoted creativity, exploration, and resourcefulness. It was made possible because of reduced CD times. We could chill and explore museums and historical sites after the fielding. Now, we don't have the time to explore new places because of this change in CD. I guess all good things must come to an end and it gives us more opportunity to look at other games made by other gaming companies. Does anyone want to play Kirby out there?
What is Kirby?
Dirty hack nerf is cool with me lol. Everyones full gear from drones anyways
Is it? Or are they choosing to make this change to reverse the previously unintended consequence? I agree, they should answer this, but if nothing else, a reverse in the change that caused the impact is likely to reduce that very impact.
Use logic, not your usual emotional claim.
@Perringaiden I am using Logic. As far as I know, Niantic has never once said anything about layering being good or bad although they have certainly promoted lots of cases of big layered fields.
Niantic said from the beginning that the cooldown reduction was a temporary change.
I see no evidence that fields are being layered more with a shorter cooldown time, though I don't know how to get reliable data on that.
There is exactly zero evidence to support your assertion that they changed the time because they want to reduce field layering. This seems like something that you've made up because you want it to be true, despite an overwhelming lack of evidence for it. I totally grok that you want it to be true but conclusions should be based on evidence rather than wishes.
Yet again you're using the "If it's not written in black and white on a web page, it's wrong" argument. Which since Niantic doesn't make these statements, just means you can claim to win anything.
If you want to go on "Black and White", then Niantic is reversing a change they said they'd reverse when they made the change in the first place, and everyone can just stop complaining because they were warned.
You can grok "this is better" all you like, but you have no evidence to prove that a shorter cooldown is "better" either. It's just your feelings.
We have seen through the last two years, that a host of changes have increased players obsession with layering, with faster key hacking being a clear component of this, blatantly obvious to anyone who actually looks objectively at the game. I know you want someone to write it down for you, but unless you actually use your eyes and look at gameplay trends across the globe, no-one is going to do the work for you.
Logic is that a change that makes keys easier to obtain is going to result in people choosing to play in ways that maximise the benefit of easy access to keys because players in any game always find efficiency even at the cost of fun. It's human nature. Ingress is the epitome of optimizing fun out of the environment.
Regardless, Niantic has made this decision and based on their recent behavior, is going to weather the storm in the teacup it's created. People will cancel CORE, then restart it a month or two later when they miss the inventory space and have gotten used to playing with the longer cooldowns. People who are this obsessed with the game that they absolutely lose their minds when the cooldown for a friendly portal is 90 seconds longer, are not quitting any time soon...
"It's just your feelings"
Feelings do matter, and my personal feeling is that Niantic spit us in the face.
and I joined the XMA programme because I wanted to make the forum a better, friendlier place. epic fail.
Feelings are fine, but every post claiming this will destroy the game is passing off feelings as fact (or making absurd comparisons to climate change).
What strange problems you have. In my city, people dream just to play. Imagine that in the city where I live, it is impossible to destroy every key portal due to a super fast recharge that activates at any time of the day or night. It remains only to repaint such portals and hope that the player who installed them will miss the attack notification.
And I'm not talking about the fact that there are people who constantly have several level 7 portals at their side, in which there are a lot of resonators set by agents that no one has ever seen in real life.
I understand that it’s different for you, and for example, in England only gentlemen play ingress, and in France only noble monsieurs. But in many places the game is impossible due to the fact that cheating techniques are used to the fullest.
The portals ARE my colour. I'm arguing the already crushed oppositions going to suffer more now.